Events

News

IM Company Coderus Puts Faith in Graduates

January 5, 2016

East Anglia is home to many developing and established ICT companies, all competing for talent on a global scale. One such ICT company, Coderus, has successfully embraced what fresh thinking graduates bring, with over half of its new recruits coming from East Anglian based universities.

Coderus is a software development company with offices in key innovation clusters (Innovation Martlesham) and (Cambridge Technology Park) Cambridge. The company specialises in mobile app development and the rapidly growing market of embedded technologies. Coderus works with globally recognised and influential companies such as Bowers and Wilkins, Microchip and Apple.

For an innovative software development company in the East of England, one of the key challenges for growth and sustainability is recruiting key talent. Often, Coderus will be competing for talent with bigger, better-known software development companies, both in the East Anglian region and beyond. Founder and Managing Director of App Developer Coderus, Mark Thomas, explains “to stand out from the competition, continually grow and offer our clients the highest level of software development, we need to attract the very best talent.

“Graduates come into an organisation with energy, fresh thinking and uninhibited by previous experience or processes. As the company has grown, so have the responsibilities and expectations placed on our graduates and the expectations on our business to mentor new recruits.”

When bringing a graduate into the business, Mark looks for more than just academic performance. To gain a sought after position at the globally recognised company, the graduate must demonstrate spark and passion and show they have true ambition to work in the field of software development.

Coderus currently employees nine graduates from universities across the UK, including Essex, Southampton, Anglia Ruskin, Plymouth and some further afield including the University of Madeira, Portugal. Coderus has four graduates from the University of Essex and has developed a positive on going relationship with the students and staff there. Alongside being keen to hire the latest graduates, Coderus engages further by getting involved in student and graduate events.

Professor Simon Lucas, Head of the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex, said: “We know the technology sector is crying out for the kind of skilled graduates we are developing. Our ethos is to give our students the skills industry needs plus the opportunities to work on practical real-life projects to build the experience and expertise they will require in their future careers.

“We are proud of our links to leading companies like Coderus and thrilled to see our graduates helping to drive growth and innovation in the eastern region.”

Essex has an international reputation for the outstanding quality of its research across big data, artificial intelligence and communications systems. In the most recent UK Research Excellence Framework, more than two-thirds of its computer science research was classed as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (REF 2014) and Essex was ranked joint 8th in the UK for Computer Science in the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Mark Thomas believes that more needs to be done in the UK to increase the talent pool and, thereby, prevent companies hiring from overseas. This is particularly true within the IT industry, with the increased competition in software development companies from countries like India and China.

On the future of graduate recruitment, Mark tells us, “I have always valued input from graduates and believe they add a great balance to the experience in the team. At Coderus, we very much intend to continue to hire in this way. When our graduates take on greater responsibility and take a leading role in the growth of the company – that’s a great success story.”